As of 9/3/26, I have two novellas in the Shades of Myth series published.
1. Ares in Chains
2. Kiss of Death

There will be more.

Shades of Myth novellas are short stories focused on Greek mythology, dramatizing lesser-known tales and filling in holes that have been left open for centuries.

Ares In Chains touches on a minor event where the facts and results are all but missing or obscure at best.
Ares was placed on trial for murdering a son of Poseidon and that’s all we really know. Ares was placed in chains. A trial was held. That’s it.
No word on who attended the trial, or who presided over the trial, or what the verdict and punishment was, if any verdict and punishment was even handed down.
I decided to give the story more substance and purpose.
Why did Ares allow himself to be put in chains and stand trial?
Who presided over it?
What happened in that courtroom?
What was the verdict?
Was anyone else involved?

Kiss of Death takes the reader into the underworld where Charon ferry’s the dead across the River Styx.
I was originally going to tell a tale from Charon’s point of view but the more I researched Charon, the more I found him to be a drone of sorts without purpose and relationships. He doesn’t really do anything but ferry the dead.
I then flipped the script and decided to address the viewpoint of a warrior who is facing death and the afterlife. He’s a good man, a great warrior, but incapable of being there for his wife and children.
He was raised to be a warrior and can’t change and be anything else.
In death, I decided there would be multiple stops for the ferryman to make, different ports for different sorts of souls.
Isidore, being a warrior, is literally dropped on a lifeless barren world populated by warriors like himself, men who lived and died fighting battles.
He finds himself in a war he never imagined existed.

I want these novellas to be easy, entertaining stories readers can read and ingest rather quickly.
These novellas are side projects to my novels.
I find I often need distraction while writing novels and these provide the perfect vehicle.

As a personal point of pride, it should be known that the artwork for Ares In Chains is by
RENREW, my daughter.
It is a charcoal drawing.
I plan to use her talents for future Shades of Myth novellas. She was going to do one for Kiss of Death but she a busy mother of three and couldn’t find the time.
She has promised to get one done anyway and I’ll use that to help adverise the book.
I like the black and white ascetics and will probably stick with that for all the Shades of Myth covers.
You can check out the books below by clicking on the links.